Immigrant Latina Leadership: A Case Study of Organizational Policy to Heal Latina IPV Survivors and their Families

This project was a partnership with a Latina immigrant led grassroots organization that was established in 1989, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Given their mission to empower immigrant Latinas, I sought to answer the question how family centered is the organization’s decision-making policy? I utilized the Family Impact Framework to critically analyze their decision-making policy by understanding how empowering immigrant Latinas impacts their families.

I interviewed ten participants from three separate office locations. Nine out of the ten participants were born in Mexico, and one in Guatemala. The youngest age at migration was sixteen, and the oldest age was forty-nine. The current average age of participants was 53.7 years old. On average, participants had been a part of the organization for seven years. The minimum length of engagement was six months, and the maximum was twenty-two years.

This project helped me re-learn a couple of important lessons.
1) Be intentional and patient to cultivate relationships with community partners. It is essential, and will add depth to your research.
2) Always exercise humility with community partners. Their experience and work are personally meaningful. Their ideas and contributions are more important than any personal agenda. Community-engaged research means that you are not the most important person in the room.
3) Stay curious, be creative, and flexible. Doing work with community will ask you to go with the flow! Pleasant surprises are always around the corner.
 

Overall, this project was a positive learning experience. Prior to this project, I had not met up with my community partner in person. I met many participants who were eager to tell their story. I thank them so much for their time and honesty. I look forward to growing my relationship with the organization, and I cannot wait to be back in person with them!